Weak Solutions Of Conservation Laws Research Articles

A Note on Weak Solutions of Conservation Laws and Energy/Entropy Conservation

A common feature of systems of conservation laws of continuum physics is that they are endowed with natural companion laws which are in such cases most often related to the second law of thermodynamics. This observation easily generalizes to any symmetrizable system of conservation laws; they are endowed with nontrivial companion conservation laws, which are immediately satisfied by classical solutions. Not surprisingly, weak solutions may fail to satisfy companion laws, which are then often relaxed from equality to inequality and overtake the role of physical admissibility conditions for weak solutions. We want to answer the question: what is a critical regularity of weak solutions to a general system of conservation laws to satisfy an associated companion law as an equality? An archetypal example of such a result was derived for the incompressible Euler system in the context of Onsager’s conjecture in the early nineties. This general result can serve as a simple criterion to numerous systems of mathematical physics to prescribe the regularity of solutions needed for an appropriate companion law to be satisfied.

A Conservative and Convergent Scheme for Undercompressive Shock Waves

Undercompressive shock waves arise in numerous physical applications. We propose a class of conservative finite-volume type schemes to approximate weak solutions of conservation laws that contain undercompressive shock waves. We prove the convergence of a subsequence of approximate solutions towards a generalized entropy solution if the mesh width tends to zero. The proof relies on a refined BV compactness analysis, which accounts for the effect of the kinetic relation that drives the undercompressive wave. At the same time we establish a new proof for the existence of solutions to the underlying model. Numerical experiments supplement the analytical results.

Energy Dissipated Across Shocks in Weak Solutions of Conservation Laws

Manipulation of conservation laws through multiplication by mappings of the unknown function result in singular terms that are densities supported on the discontinuity locus. We derive an expression for these singular terms which have been interpreted as the energy dissipated at the shocks. As an application, the expression for these singular terms is obtained from the transport equation governing the propagation of small amplitude high frequency waves in hyperbolic conservation laws. Analogous formulas are obtained for rich systems in several space dimensions.

Nonexistence of Riemann solutions for a quadratic model deriving from petroleum engineering

The study presented in this work shows that the viscous profile entropy criterion is too selective in reducing the number of solutions to guarantee existence of stable weak self-similar Riemann solutions to conservation laws. This result is shown on a particular quadratic model derived from the three-phase flow equations used in petroleum engineering. The viscosity matrix considered in this work derives from capillary pressures. The Riemann initial data is hyperbolic and corresponds to a Lax 1-shock that does not admit a viscous profile. The nonexistence of a profile in this example is due to the presence of a limit cycle in the vector field associated with the viscous profile entropy criterion. To establish the main result of this work, a complete list of possibilities that could lead to a solution, is examined. This list includes solutions that consist of only classical waves and the solutions that contain at least one nonclassical (shock) wave. The construction of solutions breaks down because either the shock waves do not satisfy the viscous entropy criterion, or the speeds of the waves that comprise a solution are decreasing. To the author's knowledge, this is the first result on nonexistence of stable solutions for models that allow nonclassical (transitional) shock waves. The results presented in this paper are a combination of analytical and numerical work. The theoretical ideas and techniques derive from the bifurcation theory of vector fields and the theory of weak solutions of conservation laws. These are combined with numerical results when no theory is available.

Nonexistence of Riemann solutions for a quadratic model deriving from petroleum engineering

The study presented in this work shows that the viscous profile entropy criterion is too selective in reducing the number of solutions to guarantee existence of stable weak self-similar Riemann solutions to conservation laws. This result is shown on a particular quadratic model derived from the three-phase flow equations used in petroleum engineering. The viscosity matrix considered in this work derives from capillary pressures. The Riemann initial data are hyperbolic and correspond to a Lax 1-shock that does not admit a viscous profile. The nonexistence of a profile in this example is due to the presence of a limit cycle in the vector field associated with the viscous profile entropy criterion. To establish the main result of this work, a complete list of possibilities that could lead to a solution, is examined. This list includes solutions that consist of only classical waves and the solutions that contain at least one nonclassical (shock) wave. The construction of solutions breaks down because either the shock waves do not satisfy the viscous entropy criterion or the speeds of the waves that comprise a solution are decreasing. To the author's knowledge, this is the first result on nonexistence of stable solutions for models that allow nonclassical (transitional) shock waves. The results presented in this paper are a combination of analytical and numerical work. The theoretical ideas and techniques derive from the bifurcation theory of vector fields and the theory of weak solutions of conservation laws. These are combined with numerical results when no theory is available.

Quadratic systems of conservation laws with generic behavior at infinity

We identify quadratic systems of conservation laws with “generic” behavior at infinity, where the genericity conditions derive naturally when studying weak solutions of conservation laws. Namely, we identify quadratic models for which the vector field associated with the viscosity admissibility criterion has properties at infinity that are true for an open and dense subset of the set of all planar quadratic vector fields in the metric associated with the Euclidian space of coefficients. We determine the boundaries of the regions containing, “generic” models in the parameter space of coefficients of quadratic models. We show that when crossing the boundaries of nongeneric models transversally, the Poincare compactification of the corresponding vector field undergoes either a saddle node or a transcritical bifurcation at infinity. For quadratic models with a bounded elliptic region we calculate the loci of nongeneric models assuming the viscosity matrix to be the identity. We obtain a two-parameter normal form for such models and show that the boundaries that determine generic models in the two-dimensional parameter space correspond to the Schaeffer-Shearer classification of models with an isolated umbilic point. Since the loci of nongeneric models are invariant under the equivalence transformations that preserve weak solutions of conservation laws, understanding their behavior at infinity promises to provide an insight into a general classification of quadratic conservation laws.

Resonant Nonlinear Geometric Optics for Weak Solutions of Conservation Laws

The O(ϵ) part of solutions obtained via Glimm′s scheme of strictly hyperbolic conservation laws with O(ϵ) periodic BV initial data is shown to tend as ϵ → 0 to the unique entropy solution of the modulation equations of weakly nonlinear geometric optics derived by Majda and Rosales.

The validity of nonlinear geometric optics for weak solutions of conservation laws

The method of weakly nonlinear geometric optics is one of the main formal perturbation techniques used in analyzing nonlinear wave motion for hyperbolic systems. The tacit assumption in using such perturbation methods is that the corresponding solutions of the hyperbolic system remain smooth; since shock waves typically form in such solutions, these assumptions are rarely satisfied in practice. Nevertheless, in a variety of applied contexts, these methods give qualitatively reliable answers for discontinuous weak solutions. Here we give a rigorous proof for the validity of nonlinear geometric optics for general weak solutions of systems of hyperbolic conservation laws in a single space variable. The methods of proof do not mimic the formal construction of weakly nonlinear asymptotics but instead rely on structural symmetries of the approximating equations, stability estimates for intermediate asymptotic times, and the rapid decay in variation of weak solutions for large asymptotic times.

Weak solutions of nonlinear hyperbolic conservation laws

A weak solution of the conservation law ut+j(ux)=0 is a locally Lipschitzian function u which satisfies the equation almost everywhere. We treat a boundary value problem and also a mixed initial-boundary value problem associated with the equation where the initial and boundary data are convex functions. The convexity hypothesis makes it possible to apply the Fenchel theory of conjugate convex functions to the problem. This leads to a construction of solutions rather than to a proof of their existence; the solutions so constructed turn out to be stable.